THE DOGMA OF EVOLUTION 



giraffe and assume that some offspring of short- 

 necked giraffes have a slightly longer neck, say an 

 additional inch, and that this additional length is of 

 great use in obtaining food. We shall first admit that 

 the struggle for existence is, at that time, so intense 

 that the short-necked giraffes die of starvation and 

 those with this extra inch of length alone survive; 

 then their offspring will have, presumably, the one 

 extra inch and not two extra inches of length. Thus 

 to arrive at the result of the very great length of neck 

 which existing giraffes possess. Darwinians must as- 

 sume, not a transmission of a real character but the 

 tendency of the offspring of giraffes to have a suc- 

 cessive increase in the length of the neck. The trans- 

 mission of a tendency to vary in the same direction is 

 a pure abstraction, and the only alternative of the 

 Darwinians is to accept the transmission of the ef- 

 fects of use and disuse of Lamarck, or the uninter- 

 rupted action of the environment working steadily in 

 the same direction of Buffon; both of these admis- 

 sions are anathema to their theory. 



I suspect that many biologists have fallen into a 

 fundamental error, when considering the ultimate ef- 

 fect of a slight variation, which is so common with 

 those who use mathematical formulae without a 

 knowledge of mathematics. Thus, Professor Hugh 

 Elliot discusses the ultimate great effect of a slight 

 change in a germ plasm many million years previous- 

 ly. He says it is similar to the case of a bullet fired 



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